In the Dark of the Night
by AccidentalNaps
Summary: A serial killer that's driving the team to distraction until the latest victim is left alive with a handful of DNA. But the identity of the victim causes as much of a stir at the crime lab as the break in the high profile case.Slight AU, D/L, Don/OC.
1. Prologue

**A/N: After weeks of doing nothing but reading CSI:NY stories I'm here, adding my own offering to the pile. I would really love some feedback on this because I've been drafting it so much that I have no perspective. The rest of the team feature in the next chapter along with loads more drama than this installment, but for now its over to Mr. Flack to set the scene...**

**I own nothing (shocking I know).**

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><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

The Thursday night crowd were a difficult group to stereotype; unlike the mid-week clientele who drank with obvious restraint and the weekend patrons whose inhibitions were bulldozed as their wallets were simultaneously falling open, the Thursday night drinkers and diners were not as simple to define, meaning the trajectory of the night was nigh impossible to predict. The manager of Bel-Ami surveyed the customers sat at the bar as he methodically and precisely polished glasses, one eye on his bar staff, and singing along to the music under his breath. On a Wednesday the bar would be deserted, and on a Friday, heaving. But Thursday saw the middle ground, just a fine sprinkling of drinkers; the pretty woman in the dress who had moved to the bar from the restaurant to finish her glass of wine, her companion having been paged away hurriedly before dessert, leaving her a credit card to foot the bill. He watched as her fingers traced the foot of the glass, and she stared at the contents distractedly without seeing it, occasionally flicking her bangs from her face. She sat two seats away from a regular customer: a gentleman whose bar tabs often exceeded the tips made by the waiters in a week, who, ironically, seemed oddly absent minded when it came to recognising the service he received. Luckily he also seemed immensely thick skinned, or else completely ignorant to the bar staff's subsequent dislike of him. Next came a pneumatic, hiccoughing woman, all dressed up with nowhere to go, literally: her intoxication prevented her from being served, but the manger's good grace had allowed her to sit at the bar sipping a glass of water until her date arrived, and hopefully to take her straight home. She chatted in between sips and hiccups, telling a winding, complex yarn to the barman who was hardly paying attention, and nodding at just the right moments to keep her talking. Better to harass him than another customer. The final occupant of the sparsely populated bar was a suited gentleman whose troubles weighed heavily, and detectably. His tie loosened, the top button of his collar unfastened implied a difficult day at work, as did the half-drunk scotch he nursed in his hands. As he raised his head and rubbed his eyes wearily, focussing his blue eyes on the glass before him, the manager felt such an uncharacteristic surge of pity for this customer he nudged his bar man towards him, to refill his glass.

Don Flack could at least muster a polite smile to accompany his head shake, declining the offer of a refill. He had had one hell of a day, to the point where he had snuck into some fancy restaurant for a drink to avoid any familiar faces. Everyone had had one hell of a day, and would pile into Sullivan's the moment they were off the clock. O'Reilly's accident had smothered the atmosphere of the precinct, and Don having his badge and gun revoked while IA investigated his involvement had been more than testing. Forced to sit it out in the bullpen while he was submitted to the judgemental eyes of O'Reilly's people had pushed him to his limit. He felt like he was to blame, he was the one who had followed that rat into the warehouse; it had been his orders that had left O'Reilly in intensive care. But it was certainly not his fault that O'Reilly shed his Kevlar in the chase, and he had definitely not told him to follow the perp onto the roof. The warehouse was old, had taken a beating in the unseasonal storms; the roof was beyond unstable, and O'Reilly had barely taken three fast strides on it before the whole thing came down. Don shuddered as he remembered the sickening sound of it all crashing down around them. Three other officers had minor injuries from falling debris, but O'Reilly needed fishing out of the fallen timbers and corrugate before he was rushed to hospital. Don finally gave his statement to IA in the late afternoon, and they had concluded he had not breached protocol and endangered the lives of the officers under his jurisdiction. They returned his gun and badge, and he returned to the field for an easily closed case before he finished for the day. It should have been a positive end, but IA's conclusion was not bought by all, and O'Reilly's fiercely loyal officers looked for someone to blame and found Flack. The longer he was forced to endure their poisonous stares, the more he believed they were justified. He could only wait until O'Reilly came through surgery to really feel any burden lift from him. He felt awful declining the kind offers of a celebratory drink from the crime lab given how furiously they worked to prove his innocence, but he needed to sit this one out, keep his head down until the storm had passed. He continued the evening after the interruption from the barman as he had spent it until then; playing and replaying the events of the last two days, hoping that the sickening feeling that crouched in his gut would lessen with each repeat. So far no good.

So absorbed, he jumped out of his skin when his phone buzzed right up against his glass, the mechanical rattle loud and unexpected. Don grabbed the phone and flipped it open, not even checking the caller ID. Danny Messer's excited voice on the other end was a welcome sound.

"He's awake Flack. O'Reilly's wife called. He's got a long recovery but he's gonna be fine."

Don exhaled heavily, feeling as though he had been holding his breath for the last two days. "Good. That's really great news Danny. Thanks for letting me know."

"Where are you? Let's grab a beer."

"Nah, I think I'm gonna get some sleep Messer."

Danny laughed. "Wise. See you tomorrow Flack."

Don hung up the phone and slipped it back into his pocket, emptying his glass in a single mouthful. As soon as he placed the empty glass on the bar, the bar tender had removed it and offered him another drink. He settled on a glass of wine and his tab, and sat back as a different man. Not entirely banished, the unease that had cloaked him retreated, and he let the noise of the bar filter into his consciousness, diluting the intense focus on O'Reilly. He heard the obnoxiously drunk woman to his right jabber on and on about her ex-husband, punctuating her tale with hiccups and noisy slurps from her glass of water, he saw the barman paying her the minimal amount of attention required to guarantee him a decent tip for listening to this obscene tale of woe, while simultaneously trying to listen to the man who sat beside her, who was intricately regaling how much money he had amassed before lunchtime. Beneath the hubbub of these two comical figures, Don was peripherally aware of another sound: a light, high humming. As soon as he could acknowledge it amidst the other noise, he could clarify it, and glancing to the other side of the bar saw a young woman, trailing her finger round the rim of her wine glass. As she raised her fingers from the glass, the sound stopped. Don watched her lift the glass, sip the wine, and grimace, before she replaced the glass and recommenced her musical efforts. He couldn't help but grin at this unmasked display, sympathising entirely after sipping his own glass of wine, and continued to watch as she scanned the room, her boredom as obvious as Don's previous distress. He was still watching her when she turned to meet his eye, suddenly aware of his observation. Don smiled at her, watched her deliberate for a beat as her gaze became candidly critical, before she returned his grin.

At the start of the night he could barely stand the staff of the bar talking to him, and now he found himself picking up his glass and making his way round the bar to the empty stool beside his bored new friend. And what other reason compels a man to talk to a stranger: she was pretty, and suddenly, Flack found himself craving company rather than isolation. He sat himself beside her, placing his drink on the bar and nodding to her drink.

"Nasty wine and even worse conversation?" he offered tilting his head slightly towards the man and woman who were still telling their life stories.

She nodded, smiling at him, relief flooding her features. Clearly, Flack noted, returning his smile had been a gamble that paid off.

"Likewise?" She asked, glancing at his own well-handled, but still very full glass.

He shrugged. "You think a place like this couldn't go wrong with a glass of red. Apparently they can."

Her grin widened, and she leaned towards him conspiratorially. "This is the problem, they lure you in with their shiny windows and mood lighting and then BAM! Vinegar wine and more drunks than a Ranger game. I think they're in league with the Marines and this is all an exercise in constant vigilance."

Don laughed appreciatively, and twisted in his seat to face his companion. "There's a little place not far from here where we could grab a really good glass of Rioja, with none of this…" He said, his finger stirring the air above them in a disparaging judgement of the ambience prompted by their bar loitering contemporaries.

He watched her evaluate his offer, lower lip held between her teeth. It was one thing to let him sit next to her, another entirely to place her evening in his hands and accompany him to a potentially unknown bar. As open Don would have been to her rejection of his offer, he wanted to grip this night with both hands, lose himself in momentum of it. True, he didn't know her, and she could have been anyone at this point, but it was the two of them here now, so why not? She was very attractive, and a discernible blush on her cheeks as he had approached her hinted at a mutual lure. And then Don faltered, realising that she was probably expecting a date.

"I'm sorry, I'm assuming that you're here alone. Are you waiting to meet someone?"

She shook her head, waving away his concerns. "No, no, I was having dinner with my father, but he was paged back to work before we finished. Lacking the confidence to sit and eat dessert alone I was going to ignore my insatiable sweet tooth, drink my wine and grab a cab."

Don's grin widened. "How about I extend the offer to dessert?"

Again her teeth gripped her lower lip, and her eyes appraised him for a second time. Flack sat patiently, unable to resist keeping his lips cocked in a half smile, following her eyes as they looked him over and then narrowing slightly as she made her decision. Just about ready to resign himself to failure, she stood and signalled to the barman for the bill, turning to grab her coat and fanning out her hair and the skirt of her dress as she did so.

"Sold." She smiled, holding out her hand.

He held her hand easily in his comparatively large one, and couldn't look away from her eyes as they introduced themselves. That whisper of a blush crept back onto her cheeks as their hands touched, and Don was certain that he hadn't seen the last of it tonight.

###

Don hadn't let go of her hand since they had left their second bar. Their laughter mingled in the cold metropolitan air, barely breaking through the constant hum of the traffic and the city, but reverberated through the two of them. A bottle of wine and a shared slice of cheesecake had fuelled their interaction at Diego's. Don's attraction to this woman had grown steadily over the course of the evening. He had been forced to acknowledge it as he watched her eat the dessert; the moment the fork slid between her lips and her tongue darted out of her mouth to remove any rogue crumbs almost had him undone, if the glint in her eye hadn't done so already. He was in trouble, and he couldn't have cared less.

The conversation continued as they walked down the street, chemistry bubbling away between them.

"I saw you arrive. You had the world on your shoulders." She said suddenly. "I'm glad you cheered up."

He nodded, "Long day at work."

She watched him, waiting for an elaboration that never came. "Looked like it was a really long day,"

He smiled and looked at her, that tactful way of pressing him for an answer made him want to talk to her about what happened. Her concern was genuine, but he could still detect that spark of lust that glittered in her eye, which, to Flack, only increased the attraction. "Someone got hurt on my watch. It was touch and go for a while, but he's going to be fine."

She exhaled slowly. "Wow, that's huge. I'd have been at the bottom of a bottle of wine, if the wine wasn't so awful in there." She gave his hand a squeeze and tilted her head as she watched him. "I'm glad it's okay."

The air had turned colder, so proximity was automatically ensured as they walked on, an unexpected bonus when she stumbled as her foot slipped out of her shoe. With a yelp she gripped Don's arm with her free hand as the missed step made her overbalance. The shoe was recovered, without incident, other than her self-deprecating chuckle was hitting Don somewhere between his stomach and his groin. As she hopped back the step and bent down to retrieve her shoe, he watched her; the gently defined muscles in her calves as she bent and then rose again; the crease of concentration between her brows as she puffed her bangs out of her face; the glow of a blush on her cheek, the only outward sign of her embarrassment. A quick shake of his head had his senses unclouded, but the damage was more than skin deep. She stood facing Don, willing her cheeks to pale again.

"I'm so clumsy." She mumbled, self-consciously pushing her hair off her face.

He smiled down at her lopsidedly, shaking his head. "You seem pretty damn graceful to me." He glanced up at the building behind him. "This is my place. Do you want to come in for a drink?" He asked, riddled with nerves that were alien to him.

There it was again, that blush. Their eyes met, the earlier glitter in her gaze now unmasked. Against every impulse in his body, he didn't move, and waited for her to answer him. She stepped even closer to him, pushing herself onto the tips of her toes, rising the necessary inches to kiss him with no uncertain intent, her hands against his chest. Her mouth was soft, responsive, her touch warm and inviting. The kiss broke naturally, and she looked up into his eyes that were now burning.

"I want to come in for more than a drink." She said, not breaking his intense gaze.

He kissed her again with a sudden, mutual urgency as her hand raked up his chest, gliding over his shoulders and linking at the nape of his neck. Don's hand settled at the small of her back, gathering her body into his as the fingers of the other curled into her long, loose hair. The apparent stillness of their embrace cloaked a more intense connection and only a close observer would have noted how tightly they held one another. Parting this time had them breathless, but they sustained the close contact. Don grabbed her hands, leading her up the steps and into his building.

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><p><strong>AN: R&R, you know you sort of vaguely want to...**


	2. Chapter One

**A/N: So, I couldn't coax a review out of anyone for the first installment. Maybe the appearance of the rest of the team will prompt something..**

**As ever, I own nothing, which makes me so sad.  
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><p><strong>Chapter One<br>**

_"The most pertinent threat holding the city in its grasp is still that of the Manhattan rapist, having claimed the lives of three women within a 10-block radius. After three weeks of no new victims, but also no new leads, the head of the New York Crime Lab was unavailable for questioning. NYPD are advising women in the district to remain vigilant and be extremely cautious. But will that be enough?"_

Jo Danville turned away from the judgement of the reporter, facing the table in the conference room that was piled with evidence and photographs. She took a deep, slow breath inwards, and her scowl of frustration was immediately transformed into a look of fierce determination. This was the first rape case she had worked on since John Curtis had resurfaced in New York and Jo was determined to prove that she was capable of catching the perp and bringing him to justice. Mac had given her the lead on the case without hesitation, and his constant, unspoken support came in handy when the criticism of the media settled in, with Jo as their favourite cause of all the faults within the NYPD. Everyone in the lab was intensely professional, Jo knew this, but she could tell that everyone was crossing their t's and dotting their i's with even greater care, ensuring that the cruel judgement was just empty words. The whole lab followed Jo loyally, and she smiled fondly at the strengthened bonds within the team since this case had begun. Three weeks since the final body had been found, New York had seen no more victims, but also, no fresh evidence, and the trail was beginning to run cold. Jo had sent everyone home early yesterday in an attempt to clear out some of the frustration that was settling in the lab, frustration being the biggest enemy of careful, scientific analysis. The only thing worse than frustration was obscured judgement, and Jo had needed to take her head out of the case as much as the rest of the team; She wasn't desperate to solve this case, she was dedicated to it, but dedication and desperation were so closely defined they were practically the same thing, and losing sight of the difference between them had almost cost Jo the Curtis case, but not this time. While she did her best to draw her mind from the Manhattan Rapist: having dinner with her kids: going to the movies with Ellie: an obscenely long bubble bath, one evening was all she could manage. She woke at 5 with new theories racing through her head, telling her it was time to get back to work. The deep breath was over and she was ready to push her head back under the water. And now, at 7 am, she was back again, examining the evidence from another perspective, and arranging it as such, so that the team could look at it with fresh eyes. Photographs of different women with exactly the same injuries were spread across the desk, staring back at her with vacant eyes. Jessie Molina, 23, was the first victim. Raped and strangled in an alley close to where she worked. The defensive wounds that yielded unusable trace marked her arms and face implied her attacker was far stronger than her. Molly Sanders, 26, exhibited fewer defensive wounds, but on top of the ligature marks on her neck, she had been stabbed, a block from where Jessie was found, just a week later. The final victim was Olivia Beckford, 21, and demonstrated a more brutal turn in the case. After she had been raped, she was tortured before being strangled, only three days after Molly was murdered. Jo exhaled, and stepped closer to the table, grabbing the first pile of photographs and beginning her analysis.

###

The mountain of paperwork on the desk would have made Don despair the day before. But then, yesterday he had been playing and replaying the events that led up to O'Reilly's accident. This morning, Don was dwelling on the night he had spent with the girl from the bar. His mind sped back to the moment he finally managed to find his keys and they tumbled into the apartment. The intensity of their kiss on the street had grown on the short journey to his floor, and Flack could hardly concentrate on unlocking the door with her lips on his. He was barely able to swing the door closed before she kissed him again, pressing him up against the entrance, her hands tearing his shirt from his pants and loosening his tie without breaking the kiss. Her coat was discarded unceremoniously as she managed to rid him of his tie and jacket. Her hands were already deftly loosening his belt as Flack picked her up and switched their places, pressing her against the wall. The reorientation broke the kiss and she looked at him, the lust that he saw in her eyes had him reeling. There was something about this girl that he couldn't put his finger on. Something in the way her legs curled perfectly around him: something in how candid she was as she looked at him, waiting for his hand to slide from the back of her thigh where he held her, to pull her underwear off: something in her sudden calm in such a heated moment; after such intensity outside, she was soft and silent as she waited for him: something in the way she seemed to make demands of him without saying a word; her shaky inhale as he pushed into her, and then the quiet, thick exhale of satisfaction as he shifted her body upwards. More than just the sex, he found himself craving the feeling of her nails raking over his back, and the way her hair tickled his shoulders when she clung to him as she climaxed. In the moment of stillness afterwards, with no sound but their own heartbeats thudding in their ears and the panting of their breath, Don's eyes had met hers. Her weight was against the wall rather than in his arms now and she swept her hair back with a grin and, impossibly, blushed under his gaze. He couldn't help but let the endorphin-laced chuckle that bubbled up from his chest burst through his lips at the absurdity of her coyness after what they had just done. She gave an exhilarated giggle of her own, pressing her lips to his softly.

There was definitely something about her. Either that or he was losing his mind because when he would usually be making excuses to get the stranger out of his apartment, he was opening a bottle of wine and pouring two glasses.

Don was pulled back to the present as another folder was added to the pile on his desk. Pleasantries exchanged, he found himself re-examining his motives. It wasn't insanity, but three hours later, when she was sat on his sofa with yet another wine glass in her hands and wearing nothing but a blanket, there had to be a more substantial reason than just thinking she was pretty.

The ringer of his phone suddenly ripped him from his reverie. Dispatch. Don read the message swiftly, pulling himself from his chair and switching off the monitor on his desk. He grabbed his jacket, simultaneously calling Mac as he sped out of the precinct. The Manhattan Rapist had struck again, but his newest victim was still alive.

###

Mac's step slowed as he walked down the alley of the crime scene. His measured steps followed the blood trail in reverse to find the initial point of contact between the attacker and victim. Around him Danny and Sheldon processed thoroughly, each piece of potential evidence was carefully bagged and labelled – not the easiest of tasks given the state of the alley. The main visual indication of a lengthy struggle was the myriad of over turned trash cans, the bags torn open with a clean incision and the contents strewn around the alley. The number of blood samples that Hawkes had already collected implied that both parties were injured.

"She definitely put up a fight." Hawkes muttered, securing yet another blood swab, and storing it in his kit.

"And her only defensive weapon was trash?" Danny scowled, curling his lip at the stench as he filtered through the rubbish.

Hawkes shrugged. "I'm just glad we're wading through garbage rather than waiting for another autopsy report."

"We?" Danny scoffed, raising an eyebrow at his colleague. "I don't know about you Hawkes, but I can only see one of us up to their knees in week old trash." He countered, ignoring Hawkes's chuckle.

Mac walked deliberately slowly away from his CSI's; this was an alley he knew, and even more disturbing to the head of the Crime Lab, the front door - where the blood trail from the alley ended, and where the altercation began- was a door he knew even better. Flack caught his eye, scrawling something in his memo book and talking to one of the unis. Mac walked over to him, gesturing to the building adjacent to the alley.

"This is where the 911 call originated?" He asked.

A crisp nod served as an answer. "The lady in 5B called it in. Said she heard a struggle in the alley and didn't call 911 until she heard screaming."

"Have you canvassed the entire building?"

Flack checked his notes. "Yea, a couple of no answers, 2C and 1B, but that's all. Same statements from all the residents, but only the lady on the top floor got a look at the guy." He sighed in frustration. "They don't do us any favours do they?" He asked, expecting the silence he received. "I'm having her sit down with an artist so we should have an image of him, or at least the top of his head."

Mac wasn't listening. He was staring up at the building, apparently transfixed. The news disturbed him, there was no reason for apartment 2C to be empty. Something made him worry, and his mind flicked through the night before, the dinner date that was cut short as he was called back to work. He had handed her his credit card to get the tab, and made her promise she would take a cab home. She had done so, kissing him on the cheek, with extra assurance that she wouldn't walk.

"Do we have an ID on our vic yet?"

Flack shook his head. "First response says she wasn't up to questions when they arrived, and your trash-diver over there hasn't found her purse yet."

Ignoring Danny's sarcastic retort to Flack's dig, Mac gave a single nod and pulled his phone from his pocket when Danny called his name from the mountain of garbage he was rifling through.

"Mac, I got keys."

Danny held aloft, between his gloved index finger and thumb, a set of keys with a novelty Big Apple keyring, and a mini pepper spray keyring.

"Boom."

Mac felt his heart stop. That ridiculous, battered Big Apple key chain won at a school raffle years ago and the tiny pepper spray which was supposed to give him one less thing to worry about, but so much for that logic.

The fear that gripped his insides hadn't made it quite to his vocal chords as his phone rang in his hand.

"Taylor." He spoke with a calm he didn't feel, rendering his voice unfamiliar in his ears.

Lindsay's voice sounded uncharacteristically strained down the phone as she irreversibly confirmed his worst, instinctive fear. "Mac, it's Alphie."

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><p><strong>AN: Love it? Hate it? Have no opinion whatsoever? let me know **


	3. Chapter Two

**A/N: Thank you so much**** for reading. This one took a little bit of working out to get right, but those reviews were excellent motivation, so thank you for that! This chapter is very Mac centric, so enjoy, Mac fans!**

**And of course, I own nothing.  
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><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

Mac had never really been able to get over the fact that he was a father. After 18 years of "active parenting" his disbelief had subsided, but still when he thought about Alphie's mother, he would struggle to clearly remember her face, and if Alphie herself hadn't held a likeness for her, Mac doubted if he would have been able to picture her at all. He did remember the night, though it felt so far removed from everything else in his life that he found it easier to imagine it from a more objective viewpoint.

_Alphie Taylor was the result of an uncharacteristic drunken tryst between a Marine on leave and a young barmaid from New York with an appetite for danger. An obvious appeal lay for her in his strong, silent demeanour, and his discernible battle scars. Perhaps he was drawn in by her liberating lack of fear, bolstered by her contagious over confidence, and flattered by her obvious interest. Whatever the reason for the attraction, they didn't part ways until the following morning: he to active duty, and she back to her fearless quest across the US for adventure and experience. One had certainly found her, and arguably was not the experience she had been searching for at 19. Fast forward 8 years and her lust for something bigger had not been diffused by the arrival of her daughter, it merely forced her to be creative, and find that satisfaction in more pedestrian sources. A slow slide into substance abuse seemed to be an inevitability in such circumstances and with such a persona. Her untimely death became just another part of the tragic legacy she left the orphaned little girl with a boy's name. The marine, now honourably discharged, and counted among one of New York's finest, had a wife and a steady income and the promise of a stability little Alphie had never known._

Little Alphie was 8 years old when she was introduced to her father and his wife Clare. A shy, quiet child, she seemed desperate not to be a burden to them, or to encroach upon their existing routine. Any requests she had would be whispered, and cushioned with so many qualifying clauses that Mac had an uneasy sense that her mother had openly resented her. Clare and Alphie took to one another with great ease, increasing Mac's awkwardness as Clare taught Alphie to cook, and watched Disney with her, and organised family trips to the zoo, or the museum of natural history.

Fatherhood was a prospect that always terrified Mac, so part of him was glad when the decision was taken out of his hands. Having missed so much of her life made it difficult for him to feel like Alphie's father; first words, first steps, first day at school had all passed Mac by without him even realising he was missing something important, so his doubts about his suitability for the role were immense. Mac wasn't her father, just half an equation that created her. But on the day they met and the slight little girl had looked up at him with wide eyes full of fear and confusion, Mac felt a surge of tenderness for her.

His feelings of inadequacy diminished as the connection between them deepened: Clare's continuous stream of education based family outings were designed to unite Alphie's newly awakened curiosity with Mac's inexhaustible stores of general knowledge, and fathoms were added as names changed from Mr and Mrs Taylor, to Mac and Clare, and finally to Dad and Ma. But Mac didn't truly feel like her father until a very late night when nightmares so vivid plagued 10 year old Alphie's sleep that she spent the darkness cuddled into her father's chest, choking on her irrepressible sobs. He sat for hours, rubbing her back and stroking her hair, coaxing her out of her nightmares and soothing her back into slumber, and would have given anything to be able to take away her terror. As he watched her sleep against him, the unconditional ferocity of his love for Alphie, and the desire to protect her crashed over him like a tidal wave. He had no warning; it had crept up on him. His love for his daughter has begun as a warm, gentle tide, lapping calmly around his toes, but now he had to brace himself against the power of it, and as she began to whimper softly again he felt his heart clench in empathy for the little one in his arms, to whom he would give the world if she had need of it.

And now, he was hurtling down hospital corridors because her ten year old subconscious terrors were all too real. The cold dread that had settled in his gut after he had hung up the phone had evolved into an icy panic that gripped him mercilessly. Every moment that passed after Lindsay called him slowed to an unbearable eternity, in which his daughter's safety became a huge, gaping unknown. Fears that never truly slept rose noxiously in his mind, and his struggle to resist succumbing to them became more and more laboured the longer he had to fight them. Clare being taken from him so suddenly, so wordlessly had existed as an irrational fear with him long before the fact. When it became a reality in such an unimaginable way he found himself clinging to the tangibility of his daughter, when the death of his wife could only be verified by her absence. And having to give his imagination so much freedom in that tragedy meant it was all the harder to reign in now.

Danny had long since stopped telling him that everything was going to be okay; he knew his boss well enough to know that he wouldn't be calmed by anything other than seeing his daughter with his own eyes, and holding her in his arms. Instead he had concentrated on getting them across the city without causing any accidents - his driving erring on the side of reckless rather than cautiously hasty - and was now running slightly ahead of Mac, opening doors, pre-empting collisions, and reading signs: anything that would get him to her faster.

As Mac walked into the exam room he had mastered most of his demons; the pace of his thoughts and his pulse had slowed, and his awareness widened. His daughter's eyes were wide and bloodshot and took a beat too long to flash with recognition as he neared the bed. He did his best to not look at her injuries, needing to defeat his irrational fear before giving it fuel, but saw relief flood her features, and overwhelm her traumatised body. Mac's arms were around her shaking shoulders within seconds, pulling her into his body in an attempt to calm her.

"Dad." She mumbled thickly through her tears. "Please don't go anywhere."

"I'm here Alphie," He said, peeling her from his torso so he could look into her eyes. "I'm not going anywhere."

Mac felt her nod as she settled back against him. He closed his eyes tightly and dropped a kiss on the top of her head as he felt her relax in his arms. His fear was gone, replaced with a sickening rage. He glanced down at the little he could see of his daughter without disturbing her. Her arms were tallied with lacerations, and scrapes. Her left hand sat awkwardly on a pillow at her side, and the swelling and grazes on her knuckles confirmed that she had fought back, hard. Her legs were covered with abrasions, and he could feel blood soaking through his shirt from cuts on her face. Alphie sat back from him, wiping at his shirt.

"Shit, sorry." She mumbled.

Mac didn't even look at the state of his clothes, he couldn't have cared less about blood on his shirt. He shook his head, with a quick "forget it." Sitting up, Mac could now see the full extent of her injuries, and bile rose in his throat as he evaluated them. He was suddenly glad he hadn't found time for breakfast that morning, the stark, clinical lighting leaving nothing to the imagination and Mac couldn't help but let the science account for each one of her wounds. Her hand was probably broken on impact with her attacker's face; she never could make a safe fist with her left. The numerous lacerations were defensive from trying to repel a blade. But the mark that left him reeling was the near perfect hand print that wrapped around her neck, the bruise already dark on her pale skin.

###

If plastic seats in hospital hallways were designed for moments of overwhelmed reflection then Mac Taylor was doing them proud. Jo sat in the seat beside him, unsure if he had heard her join him. Danny had convinced Mac to get a cup of coffee and promised to stay with Alphie while he was gone, but Mac couldn't stomach anything more than water currently. Alphie had calmed considerably and had received plenty of stitches, been pumped full of painkillers, and was just awaiting a final X-Ray on her hand. Mac sat up, looking at Jo.

"She's got a mild concussion and a broken hand." He let a mirthless chuckle escape his lips.

"Because she fought like a dog to get away from him." Jo replied.

Mac's head swung back and then forth slowly. "I feel like it was too easy. Like this isn't over yet. She was up against a serial killer who attacked her completely outside of his usual pattern - broad daylight, no ligature marks, no stab wounds, that fucking hand print means he grabbed her by the neck and-" He tailed off suddenly, as though finishing that sentence might make it real. The words hung in his mind though, even though he refused to give them credence '_grabbed her by the neck and tried to squeeze the life out of her'_. He could feel the rage rising in his chest again. "I don't know Jo, I just don't like it."

She knocked his knee gently with her own. "_You_ are off the case, so leave the science to us, we have it covered. All you have to do is worry about that beautiful girl in there. Lindsay's already gone back to the lab to work on the trace from Alphie. She had a fistful of epithelials Mac, and she even got some of his hair out. We will get him."

He nodded, letting Jo's confidence sink in. "You took a sexual assault kit." It wasn't a question.

"I'll let you know the results." She said, placing her hand on his and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "We _are_ going to get him Mac."

He gave a final nod and pulled himself from the chair, crossing the hallway and ducking back into Alphie's room. Jo's hand trailed to her necklace and she tugged on the pendant as she drifted into thought. The sexual assault kit had shown signs of recent sexual activity, confirmed by Alphie herself. But Jo was unsure whether it would be better for Mac to hear from his daughter, or his colleague that his little girl had spent the night with a man she met in a bar. She knew it would come out eventually – some of the trace taken from Alphie would certainly come back to the mystery 'Don', and he would need to give a statement. She made a mental note to call Sheldon at the scene: the sooner he found Alphie's purse with the young lothario's phone number, the easier it would be to organise his statement while Mac wasn't in the lab. She gave a sigh, untangling her emotions from the facts, detaching Alphie Taylor from "the vic" in the case, preparing herself for the difficult day that lay ahead. Danny wanted to make sure Mac and Alphie got home okay, before getting himself back to the lab, so Jo had no other reason to stay.

She picked up her kit and made her way down the corridor, sticking her head into Alphie's room to say goodbye.

"Jo, keep me updated." Mac said.

She shook her head, with a glance at Danny. "You're getting nothing until the both of you get a decent sleep. So I will call you in the morning, and not before. And Danny, make sure they have groceries before you leave them. I've seen your fridge Mac Taylor, and you should be ashamed."

Alphie smiled, looking at her dad, whose eyebrows were raised cynically.

"Yea, I will do boss. See you in a few hours." Danny said, giving Jo a nod.

Jo was almost out the door when Mac called her back. "Jo, thank you."

She smiled, but as she turned away again she felt it sliding away from her. Mac was off the case. This morning she was so ready to tackle this file and she knew she was more than capable of catching the man who was responsible, but she couldn't guarantee that her emotions wouldn't get the better of her. John Curtis had taught her a very hard lesson about getting too deep into a case, but with Mac's daughter as the latest victim, how could she do anything _but _get emotionally involved. She shook her head, turning the facts over and over. So, she couldn't fall back on Mac, but everyone else was going to be relying on her. She remembered Lindsay's face as she had taken the evidence bags of Alphie's clothes from Jo, and doubted if she had ever seen Lindsay with such a grim expression, or so silent. Lindsay's silence was something she understood whole heartedly: this time it had been Mac's daughter, but if it had been Ellie, Jo would want Mac on the case. The whole morning had been unnerving, but Jo was suddenly ready to overcome it. Only her lack of professionalism would have this case turned over to anther crime lab, and as Jo pulled out of the hospital car park, she resolved that over her dead body would she be telling Mac Taylor that his lab were not processing it.

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><p><strong>AN: Love or hate the Mac-Daddy fics? I couldn't resist. They talk about how good a father he would have made so much that it's a shame its not true. So I decided to play with it. **


	4. Chapter Three

**A/N: Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read this, and even more time to leave me a wee note about it. Those reviews do make every difficult scene worth it. Really valid questions were asked, and I promise that while they are not dealt with yet, they will be very, very soon. I couldn't wait to get this one out of the way, because the fun really starts next chapter. Apologies if it feels transitional, I tried to make it more than just a set-up for the rest of the action but I don't know if I managed it - it was being most uncooperative, and I'm only happy with how certain bits turned out. (although given how many attempts it's taken me to write this note it might be my brain rather than the chapter misbehaving...)**

**I own nothing  
><strong>

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><p><strong>Chapter Three<br>**

Unexpected moments of silence tended to catch Mac Taylor off-guard. This day, like so many others, was meant to be an uphill struggle through evidence and exhaustion; Jo's decisive lead on the rape case left him anticipating a breakthrough in the evidence today. Instead, he would spend the day controlling the rage that seethed beneath the surface of his characteristically cool exterior. Every single glance at the state his daughter had been left in saw it bubble just a little higher, and just a little closer to getting out of hand. Every wince, and gasp of pain added more fuel to the fire, but it was the terror that now gripped her that affected him most deeply. She had never been an excessively outgoing girl, but she knew her own mind, and had the courage of her convictions. The fear that radiated from her now reminded Mac of the timid eight year old that had edged into his life and heart, and all he wanted to do was bundle her into his arms and promise that this was just another nightmare.

Alphie sighed deeply in her sleep, and settled further into the couch. Mac sat opposite in the armchair, watching her breathing, slow and even. She had dozed off almost as soon as she had got in the car, her fears dissipating as they drove away from the hospital. Knowing well the signs of Alphie falling into a nightmare - the creased brow, the twitching limbs - were absent, he took as much comfort as he could find in her silent sleep now when it was so hard for her to come by in the hospital. Her final hour in the ER saw her initial shock and panic mutate into a desperate, cloying fear. The dosage of her pain medication had made her groggy, and she had fallen asleep during the X-ray, only to waken after her hand had been braced, disorientated, and terrified.

"I need to go home." She had sobbed, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I think they want to keep you in to check on that concussion, Alph." Danny said.

She shook her head, flipping the sheet off her legs, and placing her bare feet on the cold floor. "No." She said, her voice cracking over that one word, and pushing his hands away as he tried to encourage her to get back into bed. "He's gonna come here. I think I broke his nose, and then I kicked him, and he's gonna come to the hospital and I can't be here, you can't make me stay. I can't, I won't, I can't – "

Her hands ran up to her throat, covering the unsightly bruise on her neck as her breathing hitched uncontrollably transforming a crying jag into a panic attack. Her words became an incoherent stream as she fought to make herself heard over the rasping of her lungs and the sobs that burst from her lips. A paper bag and the comforting presence of her father's arms around her had been all she needed to lay her fears to rest again, but Mac knew they were far from banished. The anxiety that Alphie exhibited was enough to convince her doctor that the best course of action was for her to return home.

And now she was sleeping soundly, but Mac knew it wouldn't last. He could only hope that she would at least wake feeling refreshed, if she couldn't feel safe. He made his way into the kitchen, and set about making something to eat for when Alphie did wake up, hoping the occupation would sufficiently distract his violently racing mind.

##

"Well, that's not right."

Adam Ross looked confused. Not that feigned, cute, head tilting perplexity that made him look like a teddy bear and was, apparently, the key to getting a pretty girl's number. No, he was confused in the way that made his eyebrows knit together so tightly on his forehead they were almost touching, and there was nothing cute about it when it was so frustrating. He tapped his pen against his pursed lips as he stared at the screen in front of him. The results of his fingerprint search had flashed up on the trace lab monitor. Adam sighed, his head rolling forward and his chin resting on his chest. He had known running biological trace on this case wasn't going to be the most fun he had ever had in the lab, but if the equipment was playing up this was going to be a very long morning. He took a deep breath and reset the search, turning his back on the computer as it ran through AFIS for a second time.

##

Jo was staring at the photos she had just stuck up on another board in the conference room. Her eyes moved from Jessie Molina, to Molly Sanders, Olivia Beckford, and then to Alphie Taylor. She shook her head and sipped the mug of tea in her hands. Lindsay pushed the door open as she stared at Alphie's pictures and came to stand beside Jo.

"I thought it would be easier to look at the photos than it was to take them." Jo admitted, feeling some of her earlier resolve slipping away.

Lindsay gave a sympathetic nod. "Did you speak to Danny?"

"He just called me, requested a limited involvement; research, AV, that sort of thing. So he won't be in trace, but that's fine. Are you okay to work the case?" Jo turned to look at the younger woman.

"Oh yeah. It's the only way I can feel useful to her and Mac."

Silence fell between the two women as Lindsay scrutinised the photographs.

"Do you mind talking this out with me, I need to get my head right back into the middle of it, Alphie has thrown me off my game." Lindsay asked.

Jo put her tea on the table with a determined nod. "Great minds really do think alike." She smiled. "Okay, so at this stage we have nothing solid to link her to the other girls and the Manhattan Rapist."

"But didn't dispatch call it in as the fourth victim?"

Jo nodded. "Same area, and physical description of the vic."

"That's all there is to link them? So it could possibly be a different perp, with a completely different motive."

"It could be, but there's little doubt to his intention, grabbing her round the neck is statement enough." Jo countered, with a sympathetic shake of her head. "And the wound tracts are similar."

"Copy cat?"

"But there's no copying. No ligature marks, no rape, no stab wounds."

"So that lends itself to being the work of the same guy." Lindsay returned, "Surely it's too coincidental for completely separate attack on the same type of victim in the same area. Someone trying to pin their dirty work on our serial killer would have attempted to replicate a signature, but if he just fancied a morning attack instead, of course it's not going to line up."

"And he was interrupted. Maybe he would have got round to ligature marks and stab wounds if he had a bit more time. And if she wasn't scratching the living hell out of him." Jo added.

"Why did he attack her in the morning? If it's the same guy, for every other girl he had everything so well covered. The choice of timing and location meant those bodies weren't found for hours after he was done with them. Why did he take such a huge risk with Alphie and go for her in broad daylight? It doesn't add up."

Jo murmured her agreement as her mind raced over what they knew already.

"She was late." Jo breathed. "She was due home the night before, but stayed out." Her heart was pounding with adrenaline. "He waited in that alley for her to come home. Why else would he take so many risks – broad daylight, the hand print – he was acting impulsively, because he had to improvise."

Lindsay suddenly reached to the pile of photos that had yet to be added to the macabre exhibition on the boards in the conference room. She skipped through them hurriedly, before finding the picture she wanted. She left the table, walking over to the board that housed Olivia Beckford's images and held the photo in her hands up to it. "Alphie and Olivia Beckford have the same coat. That's why it looks like he has a type of victim."

"That coat, and the same height coupled with the same hair colour and length, Olivia Beckford and Alphie would have looked very similar from behind."

"So Alphie was the target all along?"

"Alphie," Jo replied. "Or Mac."

She took a deep breath, and gave Lindsay a grateful smile. "Get into trace with Adam and focus on secondary trace on the clothes, specifically any transferred fibres that can lead Danny to a needle in a haystack because when he gets back he's on surveillance of the area from last night. I'll call Sheldon and get him and Flack to find some trace of our guy in that alley. No-one can spend 10 hours there without leaving some evidence of it." She paused, her eyes glittering. "I'm going to look for a bad penny in Mac's record."

##

Danny thought he had managed to creep back into the lab unnoticed, but he should have known much better than that. Stood in front of his open locker he pulled off the t-shirt he was wearing that morning and balled it up, hurling it into his locker without looking too closely at the bloodstains that now decorated it. Tugging on the spare he kept in his gym bag he exhaled slowly, still trying to wrap his head round the events of the day. He didn't think he would ever be able to erase the look of absolute terror in Alphie's eyes from his mind. He could feel the tremble in his hands and he dug his fingers into his palms to stop it. He had known Alphie for as long as he had known Mac, and felt an immediate brotherly affection towards the somewhat geeky 17 year old. So many years on the job and he had learned to control his anger and disgust for a lot of what he saw, but when it was his boss's daughter who had broken bones and had been a hair's breadth from her own death, it was all he could do to stay in control of his emotions. His arm lashed out before he could stop it, the fist bluntly making contact with the locker door. It flapped, clattering metallically in the silence. The pain in his hand was minor, and worth the distraction it gave.

His eyes were tight shut and his fingers were interlaced at the top of his head when he felt a familiar hand press gently between his shoulder blades. He turned, pulling his wife into his arms, not needing to open his eyes to recognise her. Lindsay clasped her arms around his waist and squeezed him tightly. She had to take the evidence back to the lab straight away, so there was no time for her and Danny to speak at the hospital, other than a quick verbal acknowledgement. This quiet moment was as much for her as it was for him; assisting Jo as she processed Alphie had taken every ounce of her professional capacity. She could separate the identity of the victim when examining individual articles of evidence but every time she looked into Alphie's bloodied face she couldn't help but see the woman their daughter had taken to calling "Aunt Pea."

"Are you okay?" She asked into his chest, neither ready to shift.

He nodded. "Needed this."

She hummed in agreement. "She's going to be okay."

Again, he nodded. "I stopped at Lucy's preschool on the way back here." He said, his voice soft, but still raw. "I just wanted to hold her."

Lindsay felt a bolt of envy run through her. Her arms suddenly itched to be around her daughter.

"She told me to tell you that she loves you emormous." He smiled into his wife's neck, recalling his daughter's four year old logic.

Lindsay looked up at him. "Emormous?"

He nodded. "She said she heard Uncle Mac saying it, and he said it means really, really big, but he looked sad when he said it, so she changed it to make it a happy word."

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and she let it flourish into a grin. Danny dipped his head and stole a sweet kiss from her smiling lips. Tiny moments like this would get him through this hellish day.

##

Adam appeared in the doorway of Jo's office, red faced, out of breath, and very sweaty. She looked up from the stack of folders on her desk, her eyes widening as she took in the image of her favourite lab tech.

"Adam? Is everything alright?"

He inhaled a great mouthful of air and bent over. "You were in autopsy," He panted as he straightened up again. "and then by the time I got there, you were back here" his words were punctuated by the huge gasps of air he was taking inward, "and then the elevator was stopping at every floor, so I took the stairs."

"You ran up all those stairs?"

He nodded, sinking gratefully into the chair she offered him.

"Does this mean you have something for me? Or did you just fancy the exercise?" She couldn't help but tease him. The prospect that the case was moving forward elated her and her eyes twinkled at the lab tech who scowled at her as he recovered his breath.

"Yeah, under Alphie's nails were epithelials with two separate DNA profiles."

"And?" Adam seemed hesitant.

"Well, the rape kit came back with sperm from one donor, which matches one of the profiles from the epithelials."

"Okay," She said slowly, connecting the physical evidence to Alphie's statement. "so that supports her statement that she had sex with the guy from the bar." She exhaled, forcing herself to keep the images of Alphie and the victim separate in her mind. Adam was still holding something back. "What else Adam?"

"Well, I ran the fingerprints we got off the clothes through AFIS, just in case he was in the system and nothing. But it never hurts to widen the search." He handed her the file in his hand.

Jo opened it and studied the contents carefully.

"Adam-"

"I know." He said, pre –empting her disbelief. "I ran it like 4 times, and it hasn't gone any further than me, and it's definitely not wrong. I'm going to see if I can get any DNA from the prints and match it to the other trace."

Jo nodded. "Thanks for this Adam." She said, closing the manila folder. "What about the hair she pulled out?"

"No root, so it's mitochondrial DNA only. It's still sequencing."

"Bring me the results as soon as their up would you?"

"Yeah, sure." Adam turned to leave, but hesitated and hovered for a moment before looking back at his boss. "Jo, the hair she pulled out is red. Doesn't that clear that name?"

"It could, but I'm going to follow every single piece of evidence in this investigation until it points irrefutably to someone's guilt. The likelihood is that it will point to the innocence of others, but I'm going to see it all through."

Adam nodded, and crossed the hallway to the trace lab.

Jo sat back in her chair, watching him make his way out of the office, before turning her attention back to the folder in her hands. She stared at it the contents, letting the bold print really sink in; The name _'Detective Donald Flack Jr' _was stood out in stark black and white. Jo's brain was thundering over the evidence. The fact that a detectable print was salvaged from Alphie's clothes implied that Don's contact with her clothing was sustained and repeated – secondary contact between them from passing in the street would not have withstood a sexual encounter, or an attack. The science implied then that Flack was somehow involved, but Jo barely allowed herself to consider him a suspect. She really needed Hawkes to come up with something so that she wouldn't have to.


	5. Chapter Four

**A/N: ****Thank you so much to everyone who has read this, and even more so for taking the time to review. It is such a great motivator****, reviews really make my day. A snow day means this is ready far earlier than I was expecting. This chapter is for** _**tlh45**_**, whose questions are finally answered, and whose own hypothesis made me go "dammit! I should have done _that_ instead!" **

**As ever, I own nothing, and make no profit from this.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Four<br>**

"I don't get it. I mean, of course I don't get it, this is the work of a rapist and murderer and I'm just a lab tech not a criminal psychologist, so it's probably a relief that I don't understand or sympathise with him, but surely a broad daylight attack is the worst thing you could possibly do?"

Adam's rambling provided a surprisingly soothing soundtrack to work to. Lindsay found his constant chatter calmed her own anxiety. The attack had woken a mother bear instinct in Lindsay and it was all she could do not to rush across the city and drag her daughter back to the lab with her, just so she could know she was safe. While Adam voiced some of her concerns own as his stream of consciousness continued, she could focus more directly on the task at hand. She ran her gloved hands over the fabric of the dress that lay on the light table, smoothing out the creases.

"But don't they say that on some level, all serial killers want to be caught, so maybe he had just had enough of murder and wanted some good old fashioned NYPD help. And I guess that if he hadn't gone for her in broad daylight we would be looking at a very different pile of evidence."

She took a deep breath, clicking on the ALS and scanning the front of the dress. Other than the imperfections she had documented on the first and second times she had examined it, nothing else came up. It had turned into a routine today that every assessment was double and triple checked - Lindsay could have sworn she saw Adam running a simple AFIS search three times earlier. She made a final note about the evidence and put down her pen as Flack stuck his head round the door.

"In the words of your husband Mrs Messer: Boom."

She cocked her head inquisitively at the detective who stood in the doorway, his arms behind his back.

"What do you have there?" Adam asked, craning his neck over the light table.

Flack shook his head. "Left or right?"

"Oooh, presents? Left please." Lindsay grinned holding out her hands.

"For the lady: a knife found in a storm drain a block from the crime scene."

Lindsay took the evidence bag, her eyes wide.

Flack nodded at her obvious awe, lips curled in a cocky grin. "I know, I'm damn good at my job. And for the gentleman: Alphie Taylor's missing purse."

Adam laid the evidence bag on the table beside him, pulling out a fresh pair of gloves and wasting no time in getting to work. "Wow. Nice find Flack. We might get some usable prints from these. Did Sheldon get anything this good, or is he still looking?"

"There was so much garbage that we figured it would be easier just to bag it all and sort it here. It's that old issue of telling garbage from evidence. He's planning on taking over one of the other trace labs, when he gets it all up here. And I can't claim any of the glory for finding these, two of my unis came up with them."

Lindsay shrugged, waving off his modesty. "As long as someone found it."

"Yep, definitely Alphie's." Adam said, emptying the contents of the bag. "Driving Licence, cell phone, and-" Lindsay looked over at him as he suddenly stopped talking mid-sentence.

She watched him falter, seemingly unsure of what to do, before he scrambled for a small transparent evidence baggie and slipped something from the purse into it.

"Adam?" She asked, "Did you find something?"

He looked up, startled, as though he had forgotten he wasn't alone. His eyes moved from Lindsay to Flack, and then were suddenly transfixed by whatever piece of evidence he had found in Alphie's purse.

"Uhhh, no, I mean yeah, it's fine." He stammered, backing away from the light table. "I should… Jo will want to…I need to..."

Flack and Lindsay could only watch as Adam bolted out of the room and down the hall.

"Is he okay?" Flack asked.

Lindsay shrugged, turning her focus back to the evidence in front of her. "Everyone's a little on edge today."

Flack nodded knowingly, watching Lindsay intently as she slipped the knife carefully from the bag. She had the same look of grim focus that Danny wore when Flack had bumped into him in as he got out of the elevator. His palpable distress was evident in the restless energy that surrounded him, but Flack didn't get a chance to talk to him and as he had left the elevator, Danny had climbed in. The whole crime lab seemed to have taken on a new, more focussed atmosphere. Flack had watched Lindsay triple check her ALS analysis before she had committed it to ink and signed off on it, but then, he thought, the repercussions of the victim's identity were radiating further than just the crime lab. Flack's own unis were walking on eggshells after the very public dressing down he had given the officer who had made a comment about never seeing Mac Taylor so distressed just in Flack's earshot at the crime scene. Flack knew that everyone was doing all that was in their power to help out; an incident involving someone close to Mac made it personal for everyone who knew him.

"Danny's taking a back seat? No trace, no contact with evidence?"

Lindsay's eyes met his as she nodded, grabbing the camera and setting up to document the knife. "You know what Danny's like. He'll hate it if he's not involved, but his emotions going over the top will destroy the case. No biologicals is the best way to avoid that." She shrugged, "I understand, she's like his little sister, he doesn't need to be examining blood trails."

He kept watching as she photographed the knife from several angles. "How are you though?"

She shook her head softly, placing the camera back down. "I need to be professional, and I need to be able to work this case because Mac needs us to."

"But-"

Lindsay hesitated, but Flack didn't drop his gaze. "But I don't like being face to face with the reality of this city. It's enough to make me strap Lucy to my back and never let her go. Processing Alphie, documenting her injuries, taking her statement, I was so aware of what that fight could have cost her." Her voice tailed off with a shake of her head. "I just hate it when this job makes you realise how awful the world is. You can turn it off when all you are doing is finding a criminal, but even when we find this guy, it's not the end for Alphie and Mac." She paused, swabbing the stains on the knife. "I'm sorry, Don. This can't be easy for any of us, I didn't mean to offload on you."

"Linds, it's fine. I asked. I don't mind playing the inter-departmental shrink. I think I'm the only one on the team who hasn't met her."

Lindsay screwed up her face in disbelief, and she looked up at him suddenly.

"No, I'm serious. I've never met her."

"But, she was at Lucy's birthday party last year."

Flack nodded. "And I wasn't. I got called in."

"Well what about that Christmas dinner at Mac's?"

"Nope, I went to my folk's."

She cocked her head as she summoned other events that she was certain both Alphie and Don had attended.

"Stella's leaving thing?"

"I was late, stuck in interrogation-"

"And Alphie left early because she had to be in work early the next day." Lindsay added as she remembered the night.

Flack shrugged, raising his hands in defence. "Seriously Linds, you can list every time we should have met, but I promise you, I've never met Alphie Taylor."

"That's so strange." She mused, grabbing a small bottle from the table and sprayed the swab, waiting for it to turn a bright pink. "Positive for blood." She told him, putting the knife down and changing her gloves quickly and moving back to the clothes she had left out on the table.

Flack watched her turn over the dress and fold it, ready to repackage it in the evidence bag. His eyes ran over the deep red material and as he took in the line of buttons that ran down the back he felt his stomach tighten. Recognition flashed through his mind and though unable to recall the dress coming off - the frenzy of their passion in his dimly lit apartment left him little focus – he could clearly see it in his bedroom, the buttons slowly being fastened by slender fingers, inch by inch covering the hollow of her back, the curve of her spine, then the nape of her neck. He froze, his heart stopping as his brain reconciled the possibility that he had met Mac's daughter. But then, as soon as he acknowledged it, he brushed it off. New York was a very big city, and it would be very surprising if only one woman was wearing a dress like that last night, even if the prospect of two women named Alphie wearing the same dress on the same night was remarkably remote, Flack was gripping onto the fact that it was possible because the other explanation was unthinkable.

He left Lindsay to her enthused DNA profiling, backing out of the trace lab when someone else called his name.

"Flack, just the man I wanted to see." Jo called leaning out of her office. She waved him over and offered him a seat.

The door securely shut, and Jo back behind her desk she gave Don a genuine smile. "Your name is cropping up a lot today Detective."

He frowned. "Did that Officer Morgan make a freakin' complaint to you? Jesus, I swear that kid needs a serious lesson in respect."

"No, I don't mean that, but from what I hear, Officer Morgan won't be saying much in your presence for a long time." Jo couldn't resist indulging the grin that surfaced at Flack's display of fierce loyalty to Mac.

"If he knows what's good for him."

Jo opened a file in front of her. "Don, we found this in our victim's purse." She reached over and handed him a small, clear evidence bag containing his card.

Flack nodded, waiting for an elaboration from Jo that never materialised. "That's it? I'm a homicide detective; I give out stacks of cards every day."

She nodded. "I know. But this one is torn."

"Am I supposed to know why?" He watched her reaction. "Look, Jo, I get the feeling you have something you're not telling me."

She nodded, and handed him the file wordlessly. It contained two sheets of A4, one listing the details of two unknown DNA profiles found on the victim- Don saw the words 'epithelials under nails and semen' - and the other outlining the results of a fingerprint search. Don's eyes fell on his own name and NYPD photo and felt the remote possibility that the woman he had spent the night with was not Alphie Taylor slipping out of his grasp. Too much was piling up against him, unless the woman he met had also been attacked, but even he didn't have the capacity for that level of dark optimism.

Jo watched silently as Don closed the folder and replaced it on her desk.

"Have you ever met Mac's daughter?"

He shook his head wordlessly.

"Okay, but have you ever met Alphie Taylor?" Jo pushed a photograph she had borrowed from Mac's office into his hands.

Don looked down at the photo of Mac and Alphie at her graduation and felt his mouth go dry. An expletive dropped from his lips before he could prevent it. The solid confirmation of a worry that had barely flourished was overwhelming. He'd spent last night with his friend's daughter, and then spent all day today thinking about it. He couldn't process it, his brain was refusing to absorb the information. He looked at the photo in his hands again, and felt a dead weight settle in his gut.

"Yeah." He said hoarsely, before clearing his throat. "I met her last night."

##

The men's room of the 3-5 was not renowned for its calming ambience, but as Don splashed the icy water over his face, his body bent over the sink, he was glad of the comparative silence after the chaos of the bullpen. He scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands roughly, trying to order and uncloud his racing thoughts.

He had spent the whole day running his encounter with Alphie in his head on a loop. It had flickered silently like an old movie in grainy monochrome through the tedious hour of paperwork, while he canvassed the area, even as he made his way up to the crime lab to drop off the fresh evidence. And not just the R-rated moments either, he was reliving the jokes she made about having been born in Brooklyn, and how they'd both laughed so hard they almost choked; and contemplating the shallow, new intimacy between them at breakfast, when the distance between them over the table had been covered by their intertwined legs beneath it. He'd realised something in all of his revisions: that she was the first woman he'd had any real connection with since Jess. He scowled at the wording. He had never liked the method of measuring his life with Jess as a yardstick. He knew those around him did it, especially in the immediate aftermath of her death. "Don never used to drink this much before Jess." "Don used to shave every day before Jess." It became an acceptable way of saying "Jess died, and Don's not dealing with it" and he would rather they just said that than sidestepping the fact of her death and repackaging it. It was an insult to her memory to only talk about how _he_ had changed since her death rather than talk about _her_ life, and an affront to her influence on his life to reduce her to a series of numbers and points of comparison.

The first woman he'd had any spark of connection with in a long time. And typically, it wasn't allowed to be that simple.

He splashed his face again, willing the icy water to wash away the formality that had tainted his memory. Giving Jo a statement after he had been formally taken off the case had been an uncomfortable experience: he had to cut and paste his night into a PG-13 encounter that could be read by anyone who dug into this case. Not to mention the fact that he had to give a DNA sample to allow Adam to scientifically eliminate him from the suspect list.

"We had breakfast together this morning." He hated it. He hadn't _just_ had breakfast with her: the memory of Alphie swapping his orange juice for her coffee when he couldn't suppress a jaw-breaking yawn, and then loading up his plate with the bacon she couldn't manage, or when he reached over the table to wipe away a rogue dab of maple syrup from her cheek hadn't felt like _just _breakfast then and that wasn't changed because it was Alphie Taylor he had shared it with.

"I walked her to the subway, and we said goodbye." He'd balled his hands into fists under the table to burn some of his frustration. Jo was making notes. This was being recorded. He was being forced to boil their encounter down to a sequence of events, to distil it to its simplest form. For Jo, and the benefit of this investigation, the product was a pedestrian run down of the geography and timescale whereas to Don, distilling the night down to its purest form would leave him with that ubiquitous blush, and the still searing imprint of her skin on his lips.

"Which was when you gave her your card?" Jo asked, sensing his discomfort.

Don nodded. Alphie had reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pen, scrawled her number on the bare space on the card before tearing it unceremoniously in half, and slipping her number, along with his pen, back into his pocket. He reached into his shirt pocket, his fingers closing around the stub, and laid it on the table.

"I guess you'll want this." He said, pushing it towards her with a fingertip.

She nodded, grabbing a pair of tweezers and an evidence baggie. Don watched as his final connection to the night before was packed up and labelled as evidence in a high profile case.

He dried his face on a rough paper towel that scratched on his day old stubble. He hadn't shaved that morning because he and Alphie had spent as long as possible in the shower doing anything but actually showering. Unbidden, the image of Alphie in nothing but soap suds and steam rose in his mind, but Don was forced to suppress it as the door swung open and his eyes met Danny's stern expression in the reflection of the grimy mirror.

"We need to go somewhere to talk Flack."

##

"You're off the case." Danny stated, staring at Don in a way he never had before. The booth of the diner afforded them as much privacy as they could expect at 7pm. The noise of the other customers provided a buffer to the tense atmosphere that lay between them, absorbing some of the hostility Don could feel radiating across the table from his friend. Danny waited for the waitress to deliver their coffee before he carried on, as acidly as before.

"Mac doesn't know yet," Danny continued, "Because Mac is trying to deal with the fact that his daughter was almost killed this morning." Don heard Danny harden his tone and raise his voice as he did when he was interrogating a suspect. Flack had spent enough time beside his friend in interrogation to know that he wouldn't let him speak until he had laid every piece of damning evidence before him.

Danny took a moment after saying those words, rubbing his hand roughly over his face, as though forcing the fact into his subconscious

When his eyes met Don's again he could clearly see the effects of this trying day in his friend's gaze. "What the hell is going on man?" Danny asked, his tone softer again.

Don's heel tapped out an erratic rhythm under the table.

"I met her last night." He faltered, feeling himself slipping into the formality that had been assumed when he provided Jo with a statement, and let a growl of frustration rip from his throat and his hand crumple the napkin under his fingers.

"I had no idea she was Mac's daughter, okay. I was expecting to come into work today, work through that huge stack of paperwork on my desk and grab a beer with you after my shift so I could tell you about this girl that I spent the night with."

Danny screwed up his face reflexively, but Don ignored his discomfort, needing to offload the frustration that had been building all afternoon.

"Look, I walked into that bar convinced that O'Reilly was going to die. I was trying to deal with the fact that I was to blame for the death of a good cop, who had a freaking wife and family. So when you called, it felt like I could just let everything go, all the shit that had been stacking up in my head over the last two days. So I did, I let it go. And then I saw a pretty girl at the bar." He shrugged. "It's not like I planned to sleep with her the moment I met her- I mean, she initiated it - and it's not like I knew who she was. For fuck's sake Danny I was going to call her in a few days and ask her out. Now I have to deal with the fact that she's my close friend and respected colleague's _daughter_, AND that she was the victim at our crime scene this morning." He cradled his head in his hands, elbows on the table. "Just give me a break okay, I'm off the case, the crime lab keep finding trace of me all over the evidence. I don't need you to tell me how fucked up this all is."

Silence fell between them, but the rowdy group sat in the next booth along more than made up for their lack of conversation.

"How is she?" Don asked, looking up at Danny.

He shook his head. "She's pretty beat up. It was a hard fight: she broke her hand, cuts all over her arms and face, black eye."

"Fuck." Don breathed, "How Mac?"

Danny's shoulders twitched upwards, "He's Mac. Not on the case, but I'm not sure how long they'll be able to keep him out of the lab for. Which means he's going to find out you're involved soon." He paused, processing the information. "I mean, really, you'd never met her?"

Don groaned in annoyance, putting the cup down. "No, I knowingly spent the night with her and just thought I could excuse myself by playing the role of the ignorant jack ass." He bit back sarcastically. "Of course I didn't know her!"

Danny held his hands up. "Woah, buddy, alright. But you gotta admit, it's weird."

Don's shoulders slumped again. "Yeah, it's weird. But I hadn't even realised I'd never met her until Hawkes mentioned her this morning. But I mean she doesn't live with Mac any more, Lindsay's only met her through you, Hawkes knows her because he lived in Mac's spare room." He pulled his tie loose from his neck and took a deep breath. "This week is a fucking joke." He sighed.

"You're telling me." Danny replied.


	6. Chapter Five

**A/N: This chapter has been kicking my ass for nearly two weeks. Work has been crazy busy, and this chapter had a mind of its own and wouldn't be the simple, easy reveal and Mac/Flack face off that I was intending. That will come next time. HUGE HUGE thanks for reading, and reviewing. I really love reading your thoughts on this, it makes me think about it all in a different way. I've been playing the "What Would Mac Do?" game to figure out what will go down when he finds out about Flack. It's fun, give it a try…(shoot him, punch him, throw him through a window, you know the usual Mac Taylor style…)  
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><p><strong>Chapter Five<br>**

The sickly colours of the dawn were just beginning to strengthen on the horizon when Mac woke. 5am - he could tell from the pallid grey light streaming through the blinds. The low hum of a television met his ear as he pulled himself out of bed and into the shower. A quick glance at Alphie in the lounge on his way to the bathroom was enough to inform him that she hadn't slept a wink last night. She was staring distractedly at the TV, curled in the armchair with a blanket over her shoulders. Emerging half an hour later, clean, clean shaven and dressed, Alphie hadn't moved. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head in greeting, his hand squeezing her shoulder. Her reaction was punctuated with winces as she shifted in the chair to acknowledge him.

"Breakfast and painkillers?" He offered. "It's a combo deal only."

She nodded, untangling herself from her cocoon and following Mac into the kitchen. An armchair was traded for a wooden chair as she watched her father prepare breakfast. She didn't feel like she could stomach anything this morning, but she also found herself craving the familiarity of a ritual that had defined her childhood and the closest thing to a tradition that the Taylors could manage. As the mealtime that both parents were most likely to be present at, Mac and Clare had made a point of taking their time over breakfast and made Alphie the focus of conversation at the breakfast table. Even now, she found that the rasp of a knife over warm toast, and the acidic tang of freshly squeezed orange juice would have her deepest fears poised on the tip of her tongue, ready to be shared at the most subtle prompting. This morning, the smell of the coffee pot and the gentle hiss of the pan as Mac made eggs soothed her chaotic mind, and she felt some of the tension in her body melting away. She laid two places at the table, moving slowly around the kitchen, so as not to aggravate her aching body. Though nothing broken other than a bone in her hand, she had been thrown back against the brick façade of her building and the impact had left some nasty bruises on her torso. Mac watched her place a hand gingerly against her ribs and then attempt to reach for glasses on the top shelf of the cupboard.

"Don't even think about it." He told her, intercepting the movement and pointing at the chair sternly, placing the glasses on the table for her.

Alphie obediently sank back down, eyes trained on her father as he finished cooking. The scrape of chair legs over tiles and the satisfying _thunk_ of plates meeting the table top comforted her endlessly and she felt the knot of fear that had twisted in her stomach loosen. She glanced up at Mac, whose own fork was poised over his plate, waiting for Alphie to take a bite.

He could see some of the tension leak from her body. Her shoulders bobbed up slightly, no longer pressed by such a heavy burden. Mac watched as she took a tiny, tentative mouthful, and saw her eyes fill with surprise as her hunger surfaced from beneath a thick cover of fear. Mac was not surprised however; after waking from her sleep yesterday, Alphie hadn't eaten a thing and he knew her well enough to know that she would carry on _not _eating if he didn't press her to. He didn't miss the irony of being the one to insist that she eat something, when he was so regularly on the receiving end of that particular command. He smiled, satisfied that he wouldn't need to coerce her to eat and settled to enjoy his own breakfast.

Alphie gave a contented sigh, pushing her plate away when she had finished, cradling her cup of coffee in one hand and sitting back in the chair.

"Maybe lay off the caffeine if you're not sleeping?" He suggested, stacking the now cleared plates to one side.

"I don't think the coffee can be blamed for that Dad." Her tired eyes said more than her words did, and Mac knew that she hadn't slept for the same reason that he never slept; she was going over and over the day before, trying to remember a detail that would help her understand _why_. Frankly, he was surprised he had slept at all last night, and he knew all too well what Alphie's subconscious was capable of plaguing her with if she had.

Mac watched as she retreated again, cocooning herself internally as well as physically. She put down her cup and pulled her legs up onto the chair, coiling her good arm round them.

"Alphie, talk to me." He asked softly, dipping his head to meet his daughter's lowered eye. "You've been going over this all night. Let it out."

Alphie worried her lip with her thumb and forefinger, her eyes flicking to and from her father's steady gaze. He dragged his chair round the table so he was beside her and waited for her to speak.

"What's that thing you cops say about attacks on women, what's that scary statistic you drum up?"

"90% of women who are raped know their attacker." Mac recited the fact for her with a nod.

"That doesn't apply for me does it?" She breathed. "It was that serial killer, and I fit his M.O. I'm in that 10%."

Mac waited for her to continue, maintaining the eye contact that Alphie constantly returned to, her anchor when the onslaught of her thoughts threatened to overpower her.

"This city has always been my home, and I know about the stats of violent crime, but a mugging gone bad doesn't even cover this when he didn't even care about the contents of my purse. And it's so personal: on the steps of my building, but if he doesn't know me from Adam, why the fuck would anyone do that?" The words spilled quickly from her lips in a torrent as her hands had crept up to cover the mark on her neck again, as they had in the hospital the day before.

Her eyes were wide when they looked up at Mac, full of unchecked fear and he tugged her into his embrace, wishing that a few choice words would be enough to soothe her worries. She pulled back, craning her neck away from his chest to look at him.

"Is it wrong that I'm wishing that it was someone I know?" She breathed, as though terrified of the power of her words. "Do I have to spend the rest of my life feeling this scared? I mean, I can't even ID him, how can I ever know that you've caught him, even if you have?"

Mac shook his head. "You pulled his hair out, you scratched him. Alphie, you got us enough DNA to incontrovertibly convict someone. There will be no mistakes. If you can't ID him, the evidence will."

She gave a feeble nod, and let herself be wrapped in his securing arms again. Mac held her tightly against him, not moving an inch until Alphie was ready to. She had more to say, he knew, but she wasn't ready to share. For now he just held her, hoping that it was enough. He believed what he had told her, and had complete faith in his team at the lab. He knew, that one way or another he would make sure Alphie felt safe again, and until then he would be there to reassure her. The ringing of his phone wasn't enough to make Mac let her go, until Alphie sat back, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

"You'd better answer it." Alphie said, pointing at the phone that was trilling loudly on the table. "They'll send out a patrol if you don't."

The gentle teasing in her tone reassured him, and he pulled the phone over, reading the display.

"It's Jo."

Alphie nodded. "I'll go grab a shower. " She paused on her way out of the kitchen, "Thanks Dad."

Mac watched her walk out of the room and exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose. On the table his phone rang again, the piercing tone relentless in the comparative quiet of the kitchen. He pushed the emotion that was bubbling in his chest to the pit of his stomach and braced himself to answer the phone. By the time he pressed it to his ear and answered with a brisk "Taylor" he felt as ready as he sounded to face the evidence as Detective Taylor, rather than the father of the victim.

##

Alphie felt like a little girl, walking into the crime lab two steps behind her father. The elevator doors slid open with a melodic ding and she shrank as far back as she could into her hooded sweatshirt. She knew how things worked around here, and knew that the photos that Lindsay and Jo had taken in the hospital were up on a wall somewhere being scrutinised to the very last detail. She tugged the sleeves down over her arms, not wanting to be associated with that detailed catalogue of evidence that someone had numbered and archived in the case file. Glancing in the bathroom mirror that morning had been enough for her to physically recoil from her reflection – much to the protest of her aching body. The cuts on her face had been cleaned, and stitched, but they were red and swollen around the edges. The bruises had come to the surface over-night, and the cold blue had crept over her cheekbones and down her jawline. The shadows under her bloodshot eyes betrayed her insomnia and only added to the overall effect. Even without the ugly purple handprint that wrapped around her throat she looked like shit and she knew it. She'd spent the night playing that morning over and in her mind, and standing in front of the mirror forced her to see the marks on her body as a crude timeline of the day. That sort of thinking was her Dad's fault, such a god-damned scientific way to look at everything; always searching for the _how_. But even despite the cathartic breakfast and accompanying confession with her Dad, and even after standing under steaming hot water in the shower for half an hour, Alphie couldn't scrub away the thought that she hadn't dared to utter to her father. Instead it festered in her mind, twisting the concerned glance of the lab techs into a cruel stare.

Alphie tucked her chin deeper into her scarf, knowing that the less these analysts saw of her wounds, the less she would feel like she was being dissected. She cursed the unprivate halls of a crime lab she knew too well to feel this uncomfortable in. Faces peered through every glass wall and round each transparent corner. 26 years old and she was shuffling down the corridor with her hood up, head down and hands tucked into her pockets. Alphie knew she looked like an irrationally miserable teenager, moreso with the oversized sweats she was wearing, but she preferred a misjudgement to unmasked pity or glaring inspection. The journey to her father's office was a short one thankfully, and Alphie was looking forward to the comparative shelter.

Jo's infectious smile greeted them outside the office, where she leant with one hand wrapped around a steaming mug, and an armful of folders – evidence, Alphie noted, her stomach dropping uncomfortably. Her steps slowed as she neared the door, until she stopped five paces from the door.

"Alphie?" Mac asked, turning back to face her.

She shook her head, waving him off without a word. Panic was resurfacing, and if she couldn't get a handle on it, it would overwhelm her. She slowed her breathing and forced her hands to stop shaking.

"You guys probably need to talk CSI together before you need me. I'm gonna grab a tea." She pointed to the break room over her shoulder.

Mac watched her for a beat before nodding. "Okay, join us whenever you're ready."

Alphie waited for them to disappear into her father's office before she turned on her heel and walked into the break room. She used the short walk to suppress her anxiety, taking deep breaths with her slow, measured steps. Pausing outside the door she saw Sheldon Hawkes stretching as he stood up from the couch. Alphie felt a surge of reassurance as he smiled at her through the glass, and she tugged her hood down as she opened the door. Alphie and the young medic had grown close when Sheldon had moved into Mac's spare room. Though she hadn't lived with her father at this point, her apartment was a bit of a dive so she often dropped round to pick up her mail or when her hot water failed. Hawkes had been surprised on one of his rare days off to find Mac's 24 year old daughter sitting at the kitchen table, pouring over the latest _New England Journal of Medicine_, which couldn't help but spark his interest.

"You just got an interpreter's job at Mount Sinai right?"

She nodded, with a smile, revealing a copy of a Russian Medical Journal beneath the other publication. "I'm cramming before my first day."

Sheldon gave an impressed nod, and then remembered the random stack of science textbooks in the closet of the spare room. "Those are your textbooks." He stated, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.

"Yeah, Dad dug them out in case I need to brush up on my science."

He couldn't help but chuckle. "I thought they were to make me feel more at home." He laughed. "That's a relief."

Before long they were absorbed in Hawkes's recounting his experiences as a doctor, Alphie making scrawled notes about words she needed to look up. It had been the start of a friendship that had lasted even after Sheldon had moved out of her father's spare room.

"How you holdin' up?" He asked as she leant against the couch. Hawkes's gaze was an assessment, checking how her stiches were holding, how her bruises were colouring. She could stomach that.

She shrugged, knowing he witnessed how tentatively she had negotiated the door. "A bit achy, and this thing is sore," She added, lifting her brace-wrapped hand, "but that's to be expected."

"And sleep?"

She smirked at him. "No secrets from detectives, huh?" Sheldon returned her smile. "No, no sleep last night." Alphie watched him smooth out his shirt. "How about you? You sleeping here now?"

He shrugged. "Just a little power nap."

Danny wandered in, and walked straight to the empty coffee pot, grinning at Sheldon. "Hawkes, you're up. I was just about to write you off for the day."

Hawkes chuckled good naturedly at his colleague. "And leave you with all that garbage twice in two days? Never. Actually, I'd better get back to it." He pulled on his jacket, giving Alphie's arm an affectionate pat. "Good to see you Alphie." He said holding her gaze for a moment.

Her lips twitched into a genuine smile, touched by the sincerity in his words. She watched him go as Danny dropped an arm gently over her shoulders, squeezing her briefly.

"How are you kid?"

She shrugged leaning into the hug. "Sick of that question."

"You look like crap, and I don't mean 'cos of those cuts. You didn't sleep?"

She shook her head. "Why is everyone so concerned about how I sleep?"

He laughed. "Because you're a Taylor, you're genetically inclined not to sleep."

She wriggled out from his embrace and perched on the sofa.

Danny watched her settle before he kicked the door closed and sat on the couch opposite.

"Listen, Alphie, I need to talk to you about something."

She pulled a face. "This sounds foreboding. Are you going to go all big brother on me, because it was sweet when I was 17, but now it's a little redundant."

"I don't think it's redundant when you've got your hand in a brace, did I teach you nothing about making a fist." His eyebrow was raised critically, looking at her broken hand.

She waved her arm vaguely in front of her, feeling her tolerance lessen the longer the banter went on. "Yeah, yeah, you told me yesterday. What do you want to talk to me about?"

Danny met her eye and could tell the tiredness was making her cranky, along with everyone's concern. Alphie Taylor had never enjoyed feeling like a burden, which Danny was certain had something to do with the 8 years she had lived with her mother. He had never pried into the details of her past; their relationship was based on a solid foundation of unquestioning support and an unsolicited sympathetic ear. Danny and Alphie "needing to talk" at 9am was uncharacteristic and unnerving to both parties.

"The guy that you hooked up with the other night," Danny paused, watching her react.

Alphie shut her eyes tightly in discomfort as she felt her cheeks flush. "Look, Danny I don't need you to run off a beat anybody up. He didn't do this."

"I know, we got his statement yesterday."

Her eyes widened. "What? How did you find him?"

Danny shrugged, "It's kind of what we do. His card was in your purse, his skin under your nails, among other things."

Alphie held her head in her hands, the silent implication of his words causing her colour to deepen. "Your sexual assault kit came up with _him_. And you ran all these lovely samples through your machines and you got his name. And he just came in yesterday and gave a statement about spending the night with me. And now that statement is on file somewhere?"

"Alphie, we had to."

She rubbed her face, pushing her sleeves up again as her burning cheeks warmed her. Her posture changed and she hunched her torso down over her knees, and seemed to recoil into her sweats. Danny watched her visceral response to feeling so exposed – further than just her physical injuries, and more than just a freak out in the ER yesterday.

She breathed deeply for a moment before looking at Danny. "I'm sorry." She said softly. "I know that you have to do it."

Her shoulders sagged, and Danny saw the defeat in her face. He sat himself beside her, placing his arm around her shoulders and pulling her into his body. She sighed into his chest, and let the comfort he offered relieve the weight that pressed her for just a moment.

Danny looked down at her. "What the hell do you have to apologise for kid? This has been a nightmare. I don't think anyone's gonna get pissed if you start shouting at us."

She shook her head as she sat up, "You're all just doing your jobs, and it's for my benefit, I know."

He watched her for a moment, shifting back down the sofa so he could look at her. "Listen Alphie, that's not what I wanted to tell you."

She tilted her head inquisitively as he spoke, the exposed vulnerability in her eyes meant Danny had to steel himself to finish his sentence. "It was easy to find the guy and get him to give a statement because it was Don Flack that you spent the night with."

The emphasis he placed on the name made Alphie's brow crinkle as she considered the relevance of what she was being told. It reminded Danny so much of Mac that it unnerved him a little.

"Flack? Detective Don Flack?" She breathed, after a few moments had passed. Her brain was recalling the significant occasions that her father had uttered the name. The explosion, the hostages, the death of his girlfriend. Her eyes locked with Danny's. "You play basketball with him." She said, the words weighing heavy in the air.

He gave a single nod.

"Oh my god." She whispered, her hands covering her mouth. "How, how could this have happened Danny? How could I have never met him before?"

Danny fumbled in his mind for an answer, but couldn't come up with a definite one. "He's not based at the lab? By the time him and Mac were close enough to spend time together outside work you had moved out? I don't know, I've been trying to figure it out all night. Although how many girls called Alphie did he think there could be, even in New York."

She was shaking her head again: everything was backwards. Statistically, her one-night-stand was meant to be a stranger and her attacker someone she knew, not the other way round. "Does Dad know?"

"I have a feeling that Jo is breaking it to him now. Flack got pulled off the case, so she had to tell him why."

Alphie sat back, tilting her head back to hide the tears that were pooling in her eyes from Danny's concerned and persistent gaze. She let out a breath that she didn't realise she was holding through clenched teeth. Panic rose again, and loomed before her like a solid brick wall, blocking her path. Too much, it was all too much. Someone had tried to kill her, and Don was Flack. She tried to side-step the fear that was threatening to debilitate her by aligning images of the Don-from-the-bar and Detective-Don-Flack; the man whose touch had made her whole body tingle with delicious anticipation and the man who her father had a great respect for. It couldn't be done, the two refused to meld, but it didn't matter: the man she had met in that bar was lost to her now.

"Alphie" Danny's voice brought her hurtling back to the present. "You okay?"

"I need a minute." She said, standing up and making her way to the bathrooms.

The cool porcelain tiles of the bathroom wall were a welcome remedy to her burning cheeks. She felt her breathing hitch as she stopped trying to hold up the walls that contained her fear and for the first time she let the tears fall. It had been like trying to hold up a breaking dam with her bare hands, but she had no strength left. Tears spilled down her face, sobs jerking her shoulders as the realisation crashed over her. Suddenly, she was just another number in a statistic about victims of violent crime, and suddenly, she was afraid of it all; the noise, the crowds, the bustle- the very things she had loved about the city yesterday. The fear that was coursing through her body had her crouched in a bathroom cubicle, crying as quietly as she could into her knees. This wasn't who she was yesterday, and she despised it, and then the wish that she had been trying so hard to scrub from her mind bubbled up with no resistance. She wished he had picked the next brunette, knowing full well that the next brunette may not have been able to fight him off. For a long second she relished it, before it was swept away on a wave of nausea. She sobbed aloud, _this_ is what she was reduced to? Wishing another person had _died_ so that she didn't feel this victimised? She felt like she didn't know herself anymore. And now she was practically drowning in the aftermath of this trauma because she was scared her Dad would think less of her if she admitted it.

She should have heard the door open, and then see the door to the cubicle swing open, but she didn't. All Alphie was aware of was being enveloped in someone's arms and held very tightly while she cried. Not knowing who was holding her, she didn't even care, she just didn't want to be alone in that moment any longer. Slowly, her cries diluted into hiccoughs, and her tears dripped to nothing. She looked up.

"Jo?" Alphie asked meekly. She didn't protest as Jo pulled her hood down and unwound her scarf. She handed her a fist full of tissue.

"How did you know I was here?" She asked thickly, wiping her eyes.

Jo smiled. "I'm a Momma. We hear crying a mile off." She smoothed Alphie's hair back from her face as she spoke. "You're not doing so good are you?"

Alphie shrugged. "Just a lot to take in."

Jo chuckled. "Alphie Taylor, you are so like your Daddy. You want to carry the whole world on your shoulders if it will give one person an easier ride."

"I'm fine Jo, don't worry."

Jo raised her eyebrows. "I rest my case."

Alphie opened her mouth to protest, but knew better and closed it firmly, following Jo out of the cubicle. She walked into the hallway as Jo held the door open for her and froze. Jo glanced over Alphie's shoulder to see what had caught her attention. Before them stood Don Flack, who was looking every bit the detective he was, gun and badge at his hip, and who was looking directly at Alphie.


	7. Chapter Six

**A/N: Six weeks is far too long between updates. Real life is being hugely pesky and making me go to work all the time. I'm only getting this to you because of a sick day, but it helps my guilt to let you know that I found no less than 14 attempts at this chapter on my laptop. HUGE HUGE thanks (and cakes) to those reading and letting me know what you think. It really helps! Even with after six weeks and 14 false starts I'm still not happy with this, but six weeks and 15 attempts does tend to diminish any perspective, and knowing me I could tweak it till the cows came home and still not be happy.**

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><p><strong>Chapter Six<strong>

Jo struggled to remember the last time she didn't give the room she had just entered a cursory, sweeping evaluation. She had no off switch, as either a profiler or a detective. So even though the circumstances of the day meant she wanted to be Mac Taylor's friend first and foremost, watching Mac as he fell into his usual morning routine – hanging up his jacket, sitting in his chair, flicking on his computer – the former FBI agent Detective Jo Danville took precedence and there was no arguing.

Working so closely with Mac was made infinitely easier and more enjoyable by Jo being able to read her partner. It hadn't taken her long to spot and interpret the minute and almost imperceptible responses and motions that spoke volumes about what was beneath that apparently impenetrable exterior. The tiny crease below his left eye meant he was suppressing a smile – and was most commonly seen when Adam was digging himself a hole, or Lindsay was demanding a 'volunteer' for a demonstration. Or the overcompensation in his posture: finding Mac sat with his back ramrod straight told of a sleepless night before. This morning it was when his glance swept across the desk as he waited for the computer to boot up, that she saw his right cheek tighten as he clenched his jaw in discomfort. She couldn't miss the narrowing of his eyes either, easily mistaken for a blink.

Just like Jo, Mac had no off switch, as a detective, as the head of the crime lab, and as a father. Sat in the chair across from him, Jo was literally watching him wrestle with these three facets of his identity as he figured out how he wanted to face this conversation, how he should face it, and how he had to face it. The formality of his routine exposed the detective within him, while his discomfort at the pile of folders she had stacked precariously on her knee, and the gaze that regularly flicked up to track Alphie's progress through the lab undeniably belonged to a father. Jo took the dilemma out of his hands and placed her evidence files on the far corner of his desk, shuffling her chair closer.

"Rough night?" She asked, her casual question straining under the substantial implications beneath, but managed to shatter the official air that cloaked them since Mac had taken his position behind his desk.

Mac nodded, grateful that she took charge of this situation. He needed for a moment to process what he was in the middle of, before he could look at it scientifically.

"She hasn't slept." He said, "She's scared-" Mac cut himself off with a little shake of his head. "She's terrified."

"And how are you?"

Mac let a scornful sound escape his tightly pursed lips. "I wish I could answer that Jo. I feel so useless. I can't take away her fear, or her pain, I can't even catch the scum responsible." The eyes that had looked just past Jo, watching Alphie walk to the break room suddenly flicked back to meet her gaze, and she saw his own fear, his own pain, and his own struggle to be both father and detective in this unimaginable situation unmasked in them, dulling the spark that usually sat there. "I'm just glad I have you guys doing what I can't right now."

Jo opened her mouth to respond when Mac cut her off. "I'm sorry Jo, you asked me here to talk about the case and I'm being unprofessional."

"Don't you dare apologise Mac Taylor. I wanna help, in any way I can, so if you want to talk, then I will listen."

A smile was her reward. "Thanks Jo. What have you got so far?"

And just like that, Mac found the switch turning him from friend to colleague, from concerned father to focussed detective. As Jo handed him the slim report and explained what they had so far, she was still able to note the clenching of his jaw every time she mentioned the perp, and the tiniest of flinches when he turned to the picture of the knife.

"Is there anything that's familiar to you?" She asked, watching his reaction carefully. "Any single detail that recalls someone you put away?"

Mac looked up from the file. "Alphie was the target?"

"Currently it's just a theory, but he waited for her to come home Mac."

His jaw tightened again, and his nostrils flared momentarily. "Leave it with me."

She nodded, and sighed as her phone trilled at her hip. She glanced at the display with a scowl before looking apologetically at Mac. "I have to take this. But finish that one, and we can do the others when I get back."

He watched her retreating form as she walked down the corridor to her office, before looking back down at the folder in his hands. The solidity of his own chair, behind his own desk in his own office gave him an anchor, and reading about DNA profiles that forensically linked the knife that was used in yesterday's attack to the Manhattan Rapist murders allowed him to banish the last 24 hours into nothing more than the dreams of a sleep deprived and overworked detective. Momentarily his gaze skirted across his desk, lingering on the two folders Jo had left perched on the corner, that contained the power to dissolve the illusion that this was just another case, and leave him faced with the reality in even sharper focus. Scrawled down the spine of the thickest – an offensively inoffensive shade of beige – in Jo's looping cursive the word PHOTOS watched Mac relentlessly, the Os like eyes that repeatedly caught his own with a harmless glint. After a few furtive glances in its direction, he shifted a picture frame to obscure his view, and forced himself to continue reading.

The four DNA samples taken from blood on the knife matched the three previous victims of the Manhattan Rapist and the attack victim from yesterday morning. The sketch of the perp from the bird's eye witness who had called 911 gave them at least a vague profile of the attacker, one that seemed to match the poor quality image Danny had pulled from the surveillance camera on the corner of the block. It was like chipping away at a mountain with a toffee hammer, and frustration easily overtook the tiny sense of elation at the miniscule fragments they had managed to shift. Finishing the report Mac flicked back through it again, frowning. There was hardly anything in it, just the details of the knife – confirmation that they were looking for a single perp- and the weak profile of him, comprised of the sketch, and then the closest Danny could get to a clear view of the guys face. Even with all the image sharpening software at their disposal, the security camera was very old and the best they could manage was still unclear. There was a post it from Jo at the bottom informing him that Danny would be running facial recognition over the clearest images. Mac sighed, sensing another dead end looming. The stock image was so distorted that the clarification process could have altered the biometric data of the face, giving false results from the facial recognition. It was a risk that they now had to spend time and resources chasing down numerous suspects across the city, when it was possible that the perp wasn't even in the system.

Again Mac skipped through the pages of the report, there was nothing about the trace from the victim: the rape kit, the trace under her nails, even her clothes had been left out. His lips were pressed together in a thin line as his eyes roved the contents of the file. All the evidence that led back to Alphie's one night stand had been omitted from the evidence report. He appreciated the more delicate approach towards his daughter's sex life, but Alphie had explained on the ride to the lab, in the fewest possible words, where she had gone after he had left her in the restaurant.

"I met someone in the bar and went home with him."

She was 26 years old, she could do what she wanted, but Mac was still her father and still a cop, and would never be comfortable with her going home with strangers she met in restaurants. He'd had to bite his tongue to stop a warning slip out of his mouth, but he couldn't stop the stern expression on his face as he concentrated on the road ahead.

"You don't need to give me a lecture Dad, I know it was a stupid thing to do."

She'd settled into silence soon after, her cheeks coloured in embarrassment. Mac kept stealing glances at her out the corner of his eye as he drove. He knew she was a smart girl, and he couldn't say anything disapproving without being hugely hypocritical, Alphie herself being the product of a one night-stand.

"Detective Taylor? Have you seen Detective Danville?" The voice at the doorway tugged him back to the present. It belonged to the newest homicide detective at the precinct, a transfer from LVMPD. His instincts made him a good cop and his unresponsive demeanour made him an intimidating interrogator; Mac was impressed with the little he had seen of his work.

"Detective Anderson." Mac greeted him, moving from behind his desk with his arm outstretched. His monochromatic wardrobe, his tendency to follow procedure to the letter, along with his name made the friendly jokes about The Matrix inevitable, and as Mac shook his hand briskly, he could distinctly hear Danny's various attempts at a Hugo Weaving impersonation reverberate through his head. "She stepped out to make a phone call, anything I can help you with?"

Anderson shook his head. "It's regarding the Manhattan Rapist, so I'm afraid not." His eyes flashed with sympathy, and Mac appreciated it, before he faltered.

"Have you tried Flack?"

Anderson didn't miss a beat. "Detective Danville removed him from this case."

"She removed Flack? On what grounds?" Mac's tone hardened as he looked at the new recruit.

Anderson's face was an unreadable mask, he was apparently immune to Mac's fierce questioning. "I believe it was personal involvement, but you will have to clarify with either Detective Flack or Detective Danville."

Anderson gave a curt nod, signalling his departure before Mac could ask him anything else. The smart click of his shoes on the tiles echoed infuriatingly back through Mac's office as he grabbed his phone and dialled Flack. Met with the instruction to leave a message after the tone, it was all Mac could do to not throw the phone across the room in his rage. He sat back behind his desk, staring blankly at the monitor as he ran through the possible reasons for Don's personal involvement. The only thing he could think of was the telling off he'd given that cocky young uni, but it was barely enough to get him a slap on the wrist, let alone have him removed from the case. The prospect of Detective Anderson investigating with Jo left him feeling hugely betrayed. Anderson was good at his job, Mac had no doubts about that – he may have been new to the NYPD but he was not a rookie in any sense of the term – but Flack was the only detective he wanted questioning the son of a bitch responsible for this because Flack was the closest Mac could get to actually being in the interview himself.

He was distracted by Adam walked into the office with his nose buried in a file, apparently not expecting his boss to be behind his desk.

"Adam." He barked, his voice still harsh. The lab tech jumped, and dropped the file in his hands, scattering the contents on the floor.

Adam scrambled to gather up the leaves of paper that littered the floor. "Oh, hey Boss, I'm sorry, I didn't realise you would be in so soon after…uh, so quickly…uh, now." He finished sheepishly as he stood up again, the paper crumpling in his hands.

Mac raised an eyebrow. "So why were you coming into my office?"

Adam flushed a deep red. "Oh, uh,… Anderson freaks me out, I was avoiding him. I'm just glad he doesn't wear sunglasses and an earpiece, otherwise I'd probably go nuts." He gave a nervous chuckle as Mac watched him silently. "Hey Mac," he said, the nervous shifting vanishing, "I know only Jo is supposed to talk to you about the case, but we _are_ going to get this guy." He paused rolling his left shoulder timidly, "I just wanted you and Alphie to know that."

Mac had seen, time and again, how much his team were willing to give on every single case that they worked to solve, but he still appreciated the workload they were shouldering for him and Alphie. Jo had told him that both Lindsay and Sheldon had been working all night to process the evidence, so Mac knew Lindsay had missed spending time with her daughter, and Sheldon had cancelled plans with Camille. He knew that Adam was always more nervous when he'd missed meals after a long shift. It would take more than a sincere thank you when this was all over to show how much he appreciated what they were doing for him.

"I don't doubt it, Adam." He smiled, as Adam's confidence evaporated at the praise.

"Erm, Mac you haven't seen Flack have you?" Adam asked, rubbing the back of his head nervously. "I know he's off the case, and he's probably the last person you would want to see right now, I mean if I were you, and Alphie were my daughter, and I found out that they'd-"

"Found out they'd what?" Mac demanded, his eyes boring into Adam's.

##

Flack jogged up the remaining flight of stairs, and faltered at the last step, gripping the two bannisters until his knuckles went white. Cowardice was never something Flack would list as one of his flaws, but here he was, having taken the stairs between the only two floors he had access to in the building, autopsy and the crime lab, just so that he could enter the lab without Mac spotting him the second he arrived. And even with all this stealth, the door to the 35th floor was in front of him, but he still couldn't push it open. He didn't miss the irony: of all the times he had kicked down doors, expecting a hail of bullets to rain over him, without hesitation, and now he was hovering in a stairwell because he was struggling to drum up the courage to face his friend.

Flack had to be the one to tell Mac. He'd decided that much almost as soon as he'd found out who Alphie was. In the diner the night before, he had been ready to dig his heels in and fight when Danny would inevitably tell him it was a bad idea and that he should just lay low for a while, but to his surprise, the resistance he was waiting for never came.

"Look, this isn't going to be easy no matter what you say to him, but eventually he'll appreciate that you were the one to tell him."

The four cups of mediocre coffee he had forced down his throat at the diner just so that he had something to do with his hands had kept him awake very late, but meant he had an opportunity to work out exactly what he was going to say. Unfortunately, he was more wired than focussed and Danny's words kept coming back to him: _eventually_ he'll appreciate. This would take more than just a frank explanation to fix. The cruelty of fate stung him, the fact that in 10 years Alphie and he had never attended a single event together in all the countless birthdays, Christmasses, Thanksgivings. One introduction would have altered the events of the night so that when their eyes met across the bar, they would have shared a polite conversation, and parted ways. The simplicity of what could have been turned his anger inward, and Flack spent a large portion of his night furious that he had let himself be led by such a basic instinct. All that it would have taken to stop this whole thing happening was asking her surname. One simple question, and he wouldn't be in this impossible situation. And every time he reached this end of the train of thought, the tiny part of his brain that wasn't involved in this lengthy self-abuse suddenly made itself heard.

_But then it would be a murder investigation._

Perhaps the only redeeming part of this whole thing, and the reason he hadn't driven himself mad with his thoughts, was that if he hadn't taken Alphie home with him, she would have been in the morgue. And though it was difficult to not be able to help Mac, if he had to choose between potentially losing the respect and friendship of Mac or investigating the murder of his daughter, he would choose the spot he was currently keeping warm between a rock and hard place in a heartbeat, every time.

Flack glanced down at his phone, still no message from Danny. He had screwed up the plan already by not doing what he was told and waiting in the lobby. If he'd been patient enough to follow the precise instructions he would be waiting a text from Danny to tell him to make his way up to the lab while that Jo was telling Mac the initial findings from their evidence. Timing was key, and Flack had to speak to Mac _before_ Jo went into the results of the rape kit and the DNA trace. When Flack stepped out of the elevator, Jo would give them enough time alone to talk, before she would continue with her report.

He jogged down the flight before jogging back up again, desperate to burn off some energy. The restlessness of his limbs was aggravating. He suddenly wished he'd had chance to beat the crap out of a punching bag this morning to work off some of this uncertainty. He knew exactly what lay before him – he could walk that crime lab blindfolded and still be able to tell where he was – but what he didn't know, and what was keeping him on the wrong side of the door, was whether Mac would shoot him, through him out the window or give him a solid beating.

He rolled his neck, and pushed himself off the stairs. He could do this. He'd lived through an explosion, and faced death more times than he would ever admit to his mother. They were all adults, and Mac and Flack had been friends for a long time. He had to bite the bullet. The finality in his decision lightened his limbs as he opened the door, ready to face whatever lay before him. So concerned with what would happen when he faced Mac, Flack hadn't even considered that Alphie would be accompanying him to the lab. So when the ladies room door swung open, and Alphie stood before him, he froze, and could only stare at the girl who had occupied his thoughts for over 24 hours as adrenaline flooded his body.

Her head was bowed, so he had a moment to absorb her before she saw him. His eyes roved her form, taking in every scrape, every bruise, lingering on the brace that wrapped around her left wrist. Each injury that marred her skin made his stomach tighten uncomfortably. As she raised her head he had to bite back his instinctive reaction to swear. Her eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed, from crying he guessed, the left one swollen slightly shut. The purple bruising that strayed down her cheekbone and across her jaw coupled with the ruby lacerations that cross haired over her cheeks clashed with Flack's memory of her smooth, flawless skin. His eyes strayed to her neck, exposed by the lowered zipper of her sweatshirt.

"Jesus Alphie," He uttered, unable to stop himself reacting. He clenched his jaw uncomfortably, as his fingers twitched by his side. Momentarily he was glad he was off the case, the vision he had of slamming the suspect's head into a wall was too realistic and satisfying to be ignored.

Alphie had tensed as she realised her was examining her, and as her name dropped from his lips tenderly her eyes filled with tears. He saw a glimpse of the longing that had drawn them together what felt like a lifetime ago. He stepped towards her, wanting to comfort her, and was about to when he realised he had no right. He'd spent less than 12 hours in the company of this woman, he wasn't her boyfriend, or even her friend, but he couldn't drag his eyes away from hers, and didn't want to.

"Alphie, I-" Her name rolled from his lips again, but he hesitated as she gave a tiny shake of her head, her eyes never leaving his.

"Alphie, Jo." Mac's voice echoed down the hallway, startling both Alphie and Flack. He rushed down to meet them, placing an arm over Alphie's shoulders as she rubbed her eyes on her sleeve. "Are you okay?" He asked.

"I'm fine, just tired." She nodded, her eyes flicking nervously between Don and Mac.

"Mac, can I talk to you for a second." Flack asked, hesitant to interrupt them but suddenly aware that Mac hadn't even looked at him.

Mac glanced over the top of Alphie's head with such a look of disgust on his face that Flack recoiled from it, like a punch in the face. He could only watch silently as Mac guided Alphie back down the hall, away from him.


End file.
